1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a marking forming apparatus, a method of forming a laser marking to an optical disk, a reproduction apparatus, an optical disk, and a method of manufacturing an optical disk, which may be utilized, for example, to prevent duplication of optical disks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With increasing use of ROM-type optical disks in recent years, pirated disks have also been spreading, infringing the rights of copyright owners.
This is because ROM disk manufacturing apparatus have been made readily available and also have become easy to operate.
A pirate can make a CD master disk just by extracting logic data from software contained on a CD, copying it onto a magnetic tape, and setting the tape on a mastering apparatus. Hundreds of thousands of pirated disks can be pressed from this single master disk. Since pirates do not, pay royalties, they make a profit by selling pirated disks at a low price. This necessarily means a financial loss to the copyright owner.
According to the current CD specification, only the function of reading logic data from a CD is provided, but no functions are provided to detect physical features of a disk. As a result, a pirated CD can be easily produced by bit-copying the logic data.
The prior art discloses a method of preventing piracy by adding a function to recognize disk physical features.
This method involves establishing a new specification that defines the inclusion of a physical mark on a master disk to prevent the pirating of disks made to this specification. As an example of the prior art, a piracy prevention method is known such as the one disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 5-325193. According to that method, in the cutting process the recording beam is deliberately swept in the tracking direction, when recording a designated region, to form a wobbling on the master disk. When the disk is played back on a reproduction apparatus equipped with a wobbling detection circuit, the disk is checked to see whether the wobbling is formed in the designated region. If it is detected that the wobbling of a designated wobbling frequency is formed in the designated region, the disk is judged to be a legitimate disk; otherwise, the disk is judged to be a pirated disk.
More specifically, based on predefined physical mark design data, a physical mark is formed on the master disk by using a special mastering apparatus equipped with a wobbling function. This prevents pirates from making pirated disks since they do not have such special mastering apparatus nor physical mark design data. Such an anti-piracy mark needs to be formed on every disk made to this specification. However, since it is possible to extract this physical mark by examining a legitimate disk, the prior art method has had the problem that pirated disks may be made if such a special mastering apparatus falls into the hands of an illegal person. In this patent specification, piracy prevention methods of the type that forms a physical mark on the master disk will be referred to as master disk level methods.
Besides the above-described method, there has been proposed a more sophisticated master disk level method which involves forming a more complicated physical mark. On the other hand, a replica method is known that makes a replica having exactly the same physical features by melting the resin of a legitimate disk no matter how complicated the physical mark is made at the master disk level. This method requires much time and cost to produce one master disk, but since hundreds of thousands of disks can be produced from one pirated master disk, the cost per pirated disk is low. This has therefore given rise to the problem that as the replica method becomes widespread in the future, it may defeat the effectiveness of piracy prevention techniques at the master disk level.
As described above, the prior art piracy prevention techniques have several problems to be overcome.
These problems are summarized below.
Problem 1: The effectiveness of the master disk level piracy prevention techniques of the prior art is low since it is possible to replicate the physical mark.
Problem 2: In the prior art method that forms a physical mark based on physical mark design data, if a manufacturing apparatus of the same precision as the apparatus used by the legitimate disk manufacturer is obtained, illegal disks can be easily manufactured.
Problem 3: Since the security level provided by the prior art piracy prevention methods is fixed, its effectiveness decreases against constantly improving pirating techniques.
Problem 4: If a disk format without copy protection were allowed to exist along with a disk format with copy protection, pirated disks could be made with the disk format without copy protection. It has therefore been necessary to produce all disks with copy protection. The use of copy protection is therefore limited to closed specifications such as game disks.
Problem 5: According to the prior art methods, a limited number of licensing companies possess the special manufacturing apparatus and do not make the apparatus public. Therefore, software makers cannot make disks except at the licensing companies.
Problem 6: In the master-disk marking method, all disks pressed from the same master disk have the same disk ID. This means that all disks can be run by using the same password. As a result, password security cannot be maintained unless a floppy disk or a communication line is used in combination. Furthermore, the password has to be entered each time the disk is used since secondary recording is not possible.